


Her Own

by tatooedlaura



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 04:26:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12522932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: She'd never owned her own house before ...





	Her Own

She’d never owned her own home. She lived in five different houses with her family, called Maggie’s current place home since she was eight, leased her condo on a yearly basis and bunked in 427 different hotel rooms in the last two years but now, as she walked into the dusty, slightly sad, sagging, weather-beaten gray farmhouse, she felt the smallest of flames flare in her chest.

She had her own home.

She had her own Mulder.

She had a place to come to when she needed to hide from the world … she had her Mulder to drag over to their couch and cuddle against … she had her own set of creaking stairs complete with step that cracked like a gunshot if you stepped directly in the middle of it … she had a faucet that dripped and a back door that stuck … she had a front porch that begged for a hammock and a living room that begged for a squashy chair to nap in on Sunday afternoons …

She had a bed to share and a raised toilet seat to argue over …

She had a family of ladybugs living in the kitchen window that she secretly named Stan and Louise …

And she had free air to breathe and windows without blinds.

Mulder found her in the kitchen, running a finger along the edge of the chipped Formica countertop, the hint of worship on her lips as they turned up an eighth of an inch, smile forming where worry lines had parked themselves the day she shook his hand.

He would have watched her forever but the corner of his box slipped his fingers and toppled, crashed to the ground, metallic clangs muffled by cardboard.

Startled from her reverie, hand going to heart automatically, she raised the eyebrow at him, “if you just busted my toaster oven, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Not missing a beat, he pulled his wallet out, tossing it in her direction, “just take it all now. I’ll drop at least two more boxes before this nightmare ends.”

Carelessly chucking wallet to drainboard, she hiked herself up on the counter, swinging feet banging askew cupboard door in a low rhythm, “come here.”

“Are you going to kill me? Seriously, if you’re going to kill me, I’d rethink it simply from the standpoint that you need somebody to help carry in the heavy stuff.” Shuffling towards her, head hanging in mock guilt, “and the couch is still in the back of the truck.”

Counter providing eye-level boost to shortness, she twinkled at him, not giving a rat’s hairy butt about the toaster oven or the couch, “I want to introduce you to a few someones.”

Instead of words, he gave her that look of his that used to send her into fits of scientific loquaciousness the likes of which he’d never encountered but now made her insides dissolve in a liquid dilemma … did she kiss him and christen the sturdy counter or keep decorum and save action for after dark?

Deep breath in, she pointed towards the ladybug family, “this is the Dotting family. The bigger one is Stan and the smaller is Louise.”

“Hello, Stan. Hello, Louise.”

He greeted the ladybugs without hesitation.

Screw decorum.


End file.
